


that kind of real that feels like home

by callmefairyofthesea



Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [6]
Category: Teen Titans (Animated Series)
Genre: F/F, Friendship, Gen, I mean not exactly unrequited but Raven isn't ready for anything serious, Pining, Rejection, Unrequited Love, mentions of Blackfire/Raven, since that's going on in the background
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-27
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-18 23:29:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29741529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmefairyofthesea/pseuds/callmefairyofthesea
Summary: Tara finds the right words just a little too late.Set in the same universe as "no man is an island."
Relationships: Raven/Tara Markov
Series: just because it's temporary doesn't mean it's worth less [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2185842
Kudos: 4





	that kind of real that feels like home

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place a couple of days after "used (affectionate)." I wanted to sit in Raven’s POV to explore how she feels about Tara. Their relationship isn’t *unrequited*, exactly. Raven just isn’t ready to complicate a friendship with extra steps. And is still figuring out what the hell love even is.

Raven is thinking about swollen lips and locked doors when Tara nudges her elbow and pulls her away from daydreaming.

“Raven.”

It is just them tonight, their knees notched together in a bowl of pillows and books, surrounded by curved shelves that tower to the ceiling, half-asleep in the quiet drudgery of Tamaran’s royal library. And Raven has wanted to get her hands on this book since three weeks back, but her focus is still mulling over this morning, last night, and the soft glow of yellow bulbs (not candles) makes it so easy to fantasize.

Three galaxies sideways, but maybe some things are universal.

“Rae,” says Tara, nudging again.

Raven hums and turns a page, back to the flow chart of royal pedigrees, picking out the phonetics that Kori taught her, the names she thinks she recognizes. Thinking about Komand’r and the sound of her voice half-asleep, the Tamaranean nothings that she murmurs in Raven’s ear, the soft sounds that Raven wishes she understood.

She can learn another language. It can’t be that bad after Sanskrit.

“Hey,” says Tara, and it’s funny to think that three months ago, Tara didn’t exist. That three months ago, Raven sat on porch steps next to fireflies and pretended she was doing this for Gar.

(She doesn’t know why she did it.)

“I’m reading,” Raven says. “You shouldn’t have come along if you couldn’t entertain yourself.”

“You didn’t tell me that they don’t have anything in _English._ ”

“Shh. This is a library.”

“ _Raven_ ,” Tara laughs, bright and loud, the warmth of it echoing in this empty maze of silver shelves and gilded tiles, reminding Raven that sometimes second chances are worth it.

“I’m sure they have picture books somewhere.”

“What are you reading, anyway?” Tara snorts, shoving their knees together, and this time she lingers. Her pink calf lined up with Raven’s.

“Family trees.”

“Why?”

“It’s interesting.”

Not as interesting as Komand’r, she thinks, who kissed her bite marks soft this morning, who promised to leave her door unlocked tonight.

“You’re a nerd.”

“You lick rocks.”

“I don’t—I do _not_!”

“Rock-licker,” says Raven under her breath, smiling. This is easier than she thought it could be, so much easier than the flat wastelands that was Tara’s mindscape the first time they crawled through caved-in memories. In this quiet moment between wars, after funerals, next to heirs recovered, it’s not hard to forget Slade and betrayal.

Especially when Tara’s thoughts are bright yellow, open. Broadcasting in wavy seismograph lines.

“It was _one_ time.”

When Raven turns another page of the soft vellum book, Tara mumbles to herself. The library is dark outside their circle of soft-lit bulbs, no guards, no clink of weapons, no whispers. It’s nice, after the uprising and red-splattered walls. There are still bloodstains in the banquet hall. There are still golden robes of people in mourning.

Raven doesn’t expect Tara’s hand to slide over hers the next time she turns the page.

“Um?”

Tara refuses to look at her. Raven can only see long lines of blonde, white tangled lashes, pale lips pressed together. Pink fingers tremble.

Raven stops moving; Tara’s flushed cheeks drop her stomach like a stone.

Because she knows what this is.

She watched Gar do this in Paris, and right now is a train wreck in slow-motion, waiting for Tara to find the words, waiting to reject her because she _can’t._

Because it is one thing to link their elbows together and fall through mirror memories, watching their history catch fire and burn into scraps of black ash forgiveness. It’s another thing to push past _comfortable,_ when _comfortable_ has taken three months of stilted conversations in secret, fleshing out the mistakes they made with each other, writing over the stains and scars that made a relationship unbearable.

Three months is not that long, and Raven is still finding the patterns she recycles from the monks, from Arella, from Trigon in her nightmares, and Tara only has a few years of _normal_ under her belt.

It’s one thing to echo laughter in the cavernous chambers of columns and ribboned stone, sifting through bags of sand and bumping elbows as they relearn each other, as Raven rewraps her memories of Tara onto this thin-boned stranger with blue eyes and freckled shoulders, someone who time has remodeled, someone who chooses to remake herself in the heat of volcanoes.

Raven is new to feeling, but she knows her limits, and Tara is one of them.

Tara is the delicate lines of breakable trust, yellow strands and pink cheeks, new and gangly and _dangerous._

Tara is dangerous.

Tara is dangerous like Komand’r isn’t, and Raven _can’t._

“Um,” she repeats, trying to move her hand away.

Except she doesn’t.

“I know it’s _us,_ ” says Tara, almost inaudibly even though they are alone, even though the library is nothing but ancient books and undusted shelves. “And I know it’s complicated because we’re still working through everything. The, um, the Slade stuff. Control. And I know you’ve been through a lot since then, but I…”

The yellow bulbs gild her eyes green. Green like Gar, green like relationships Raven refuses to risk.

“I _like_ you,” says Tara, and then she laughs. Laughs because she seems to find everything funny, since she was reborn from stone. “And it’s so stupid because I—I _get it,_ okay? Like, I know this isn’t supposed to work, and I know it’s weird with, um. With Gar and—he told me about Paris—but I’m _different._ You know? _I’m_ different, and I really, really like you.”

This is coming a week too late, and maybe Raven should have seen the hard glints of infatuation over the summer. Back on Earth. Back on day trips to the Appalachian Mountains, the Rockies, Niagara Cave, Luray Caverns.

It’s not until Tara sweeps a hand behind her ear, tucking a loose lock of hair, that Raven realizes why she sat on that foster parents’ porch for hours.

“So, um. I know we’re still on Tamaran for a few weeks. And that we’re all still recovering from…you know. And we need to be there for Kori and her family, but I thought maybe—maybe I could take you on a date?”

It’s not until right now that Raven realizes that even though she is new to feeling, there are words for the hard ball of cold she pushed against Tara three years ago. Something like jealousy. Something like oblivious. Something like the potential of _maybe._

Tara laughs again, like she is too caught up in the whirlwind of confessions to realize what’s happening. “I don’t know what there is to do around here? Since a lot of the palace is still being rebuilt, and there’s the evali’wanpaq traditions or whatever, but I bet there’s some mountains past the mines. Maybe some caves. And—and I like exploring with you. So, um, what do you think?”

And now the last three months come crashing down if Raven can’t find the right words.

Words like Paris.

“Tara, we can’t.”

Tara’s eyes are still bright. Even though they tighten around the corners, just barely. “What do you mean, we can’t?”

“ _I_ can’t. With you. I’m not good with—I’m new at—”

“Oh.”

“I’m still figuring out how to regulate my emotions. It’s easier, since Trigon was destroyed, but…”

“Pfft.” Blowing hot air, Tara lifts her hands from the vellum book, away from Raven’s skin. “I guess it hasn’t been that long since you’ve been allowed to _feel_. I just thought—with me.”

“I don’t want to mess this up.”

“God, I feel like an idiot.”

“Tara—”

“No, don’t. Gar said you wouldn’t be ready, and now I’m—I’m just being _stupid._ ”

“You’re not stupid—”

“So I should leave.”

Raven pulls hard at Tara’s hand before she can get up from the bowl of pillows. This library nook. “I don’t want anything to change.”

Tara’s emotions flare out hot and hurt, so loud that they slap themselves over Raven’s walls and crumble them into something gritty, dry. “I just need a second, okay?”

“It’s not _you._ ”

“It’s fine. I’ll be okay; I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself.”

But Raven doesn’t want her to leave. She doesn’t let go of her wrist. She holds on, tighter.

“Raven.”

“I can’t mess this up again. Ever since Paris, I—”

Ever since Paris, Gar spends more time in the ocean than with her. Ever since Paris, Gar put pins into their relationship, lines that he refuses to cross.

 _For me,_ he says when he pulls her hand off his broken thumb, as though healing is too intimate. _Makes it a little easier to move on, you know?_

“We’re still _friends,_ ” Tara says too fast, crouching back down to tilt her head at Raven. Six inches apart. “God, I wasn’t trying to make this awkward.”

“I’m seeing someone,” Raven blurts.

“What?”

“I can’t be with you—with anyone—until I know what I’m—but I’m trying to do that. Here.”

“With _who_?” Tara hisses.

“It’s not you,” Raven repeats, because Komand’r feels like a dirty secret now, like shame. “It’s not you. It’s not Gar. I’m _trying_ to be ready. I’m trying, but—”

“Raven,” says Tara, and this time her yellow mind is soft. Too understanding.

Something like pity.

“It’s too _much._ ” And Raven throws her head into her knees, wraps her arms tight together and breathes slow and steady so that tears don’t fall.

Tara smells like cheap soap and cherries.

“Raven, it’s okay. _We’ll_ be okay.”

Raven feels like a child right now, and everything is too bright, too loud, too new. Especially when Tara runs fingers through her hair, like a lover not a friend, and presses a warm kiss to her temple, sighing.

Because Raven is still learning the jagged lines of Komand’r’s lust, slow and exploratory, but it’s not real the way that Gar is, that Tara is.

The kind of real that feels like home.

**Author's Note:**

> Ouch. There it is. The scene that Tara mentioned in chapter six of "no man is an island." When she asked Raven out just a little too late for it to go anywhere. (I’d love to write these two in a long-lasting, healthy, romantic relationship, but I feel like it would take another 100k words just to work through the whole complicated rivals-to-friends-to-enemies-to-amnesiacs-to-friends-to-lovers mess.)


End file.
